𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Labour veteran Graham Stringer has become the first MP on his side of the Commons to say Britain should quit the European Convention on Human Rights. His comments come amid yet another crisis for the Government as it panics following this week’s bombshell Epping Forest migrant hotel court ruling.

After a record-breaking year for Channel crossings, Mr Stringer said on Thursday that Sir Keir Starmer must remove any legal impediment stopping the UK from ending the crisis, including leaving the ECHR. He told the BBC’s World at One programme: “What you’ve got to remember is most of the people crossing the Channel are young men, they have destroyed their papers before they get here, they’re coming from a completely civilised country in France. They’re paying international criminals to get here and the courts are saying they have a right to stay under the refugee convention, I assume, and possibly other conventions. That doesn’t seem reasonable to me.”

Asked whether that included withdrawal from the Human Rights treaty, he simply said: “Yes.”

“Clem Attlee, who was prime minister when the Convention on Human Rights was signed, agreed to it on the basis that it didn’t apply to the UK and the same with the Refugee Convention. Europe was in a mess. It applied only to Europe at the time.”

He said the convention’s rules on asylum were “very good” when they were introduced, but that the court has since “extended their remit, and we need laws that apply to the current situation”.

On the migrant crisis itself, the Blackley and Middleton South MP fumed: “I think people who come here illegally, and they are funding international criminals, should not be allowed to stay.

“What happens when they’re allowed to stay? They’re getting priority beyond my constituents who need to be housed, who need access to the health service and need access to dental services.”

He joins Lord Glasman as the only two Labour parliamentarians to back quitting the ECHR, aligning themselves with Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick on the key issue.

Kemi Badenoch is yet to confirm whether leaving the ECHR is official Tory policy, and has set up a commission to answer the question.

It’s expected she will confirm that she would leave the ECHR if she becomes Prime Minister at the Tories’ October party conference.

Another Labour MP, Jonathan Hinder, said in April that it’s “quite clear” that the convention “isn’t working”, taking aim at the judges’ “crazy judgements” and “huge judicial over-reach”.

Mr Hinder said that while he would prefer to prioritise seeking reforms of the treaty, nothing should be “off the table” if those attempts at reform fail.

Former Home Secretary Jack Straw has also said Britain should question its membership of the ECHR, writing in March that there is little reason to remain.

Mr Straw argued: “It is the success of the HRA that provides the Prime Minister with a way through the dilemma … about the difficulties to effective immigration control that the ECHR presents. These have been thrown up not by the convention itself but by expansive, and sometimes inconsistent or incoherent, interpretations of its articles by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.”